


Drusilla's Phosphorescent Adventure

by drladybird



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect: Andromeda
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Angst and Humor, Ayan fruit, Canon Backstory, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Lexi T'Perro has no gender because I felt like it, Sexually Transmitted Diseases, Worldbuilding, beetlehat!, spaceship doctor is fed up with crew shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-12
Packaged: 2019-08-22 09:48:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16595552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/drladybird/pseuds/drladybird
Summary: “Your idea of a wild night out is breaking into the botanic gardens after they’ve closed for the night.”Vetra rested her elbow on top of Peebee’s head. “Come on, it’ll be gorgeous! They have a whole bioluminescent section!”“Not an armrest!”“Hey, I’m average height.” She put a bit more weight on her elbow. “Not my fault your dad had incredibly recessive genes.”Damn, but it was a lovely night, warm against her skin and smelling like alien flowers. The stars, well, they’d all been spoiled for starlight on the Tempest, but she could see the arc-shape of the new galaxy across the sky.In her old hometown, they’d called the old galaxy the River of Stars. Her father told her fairy tales about cunning Essira, who drank from the pool of stars and spilled it across the universe. On Daurine Colony it had been the Thousand Birds flying to the Otherworld, or the wealth-god’s flower garden, or the souls of lost miners watching over their kin. Sid used to make paper birds to stand with the Thousand. She might still remember how.





	Drusilla's Phosphorescent Adventure

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kahika](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kahika/gifts).



> I have no idea how this got deleted! Sorry! Just re-uploaded it!

  


Vetra had seen a fair bit of Cipritine as a kid. Eight separate school trips (seven of them fun) to look at eight different bits of ancient history. Not to mention that family holiday when she was nine. Good news: her parents had quit fighting that week and gone back to being madly in love. Bad news: they’d been so busy doing things Vetra did _not_ want to see that they’d hardly left the hotel. Good news: they weren’t watching their wallets! So she’d had a great week exploring the old Varro district and eating twelve-herb dumplings and hanging round the zoo.

Fascinating as the Silver City was, though, Vetra couldn’t see why anyone wanted to live there. Cipritine had spread like a glittery fungus over two thousand years, into a mess of alleys with the odd shiny palace sprouting between piles of trash. Then it spent the next two thousand being restored as faithfully as possible. We got the hang of indoor plumbing? That’s not authentic – install it where no one can see it! The emperors fucked up one too many times so we beat them to death and tried to invent meritocracy, um, attempted meritocracy, hey, we’re doing our best? Rebuild the rubbishy slum houses to be comfortable but still look like a slum! We made friends with the helpful spheres and the cute frogs and the strangely attractive blue squishies? Better keep our new Species Capital as frozen in time as possible in case they want a look! Someone replaced their hideous, authentic roof tiles with nice ones? Fine them and make them change it back! It’d be like living in a museum, except with more traffic jams.

Whereas Aya City… you could look at it and imagine that Heleus had been a utopia once. You could imagine that before the Scourge smashed the place and the kett shit on what was left, the locals hadn’t just looked like brightly coloured plushies, they’d _acted_ like talking plushies from some awful kids’ cartoon, walking round just radiating happiness and niceness and cooperation and wearing flower crowns.

You probably _shouldn’t_ imagine that. Patronising. And highly unlikely.

They must have had a damn good Golden Age, though.

\--------------------------------------

The office was cramped - a supermarket middle manager's office, with a battered desk and an stained computer and an eight-inch spider on the ceiling. The chairs must have been comfortable for angara, with all that padding over their spines, but Vetra had to perch on the edge to stop the chair back poking into her carapace, and her knees only fit under the desk if she kept her hocks awkwardly flat on the floor. The air conditioning was blowing ice cold through her grey silk tunic and trousers, and the little frill of a cape was too short to wrap round her chest, and she had to stiffen all her muscles so she didn’t shiver. 

On the bright side, the walls were covered in baby photos. Tiny squishy things made of pure adorable.

“So that’s two crates of medium-quality vae-apples,” said the manager… whatsername, the fat blue one with all the gold filigree rings in her mane. She was wearing a little name tag glued to her bare chest but it was in Shelesh script. “Two kilos of pickled khraa, perfect for flavouring a stew _._ Forty kilos of dried, smoked zahha minnows – excellent source of cheap protein, and delicious if you’re not a snob. Hundred kilos of assorted grains and a hundred of our cheapest dried beans. And I’ll see what we can do about the canned fruit.” She nodded firmly so that her soft mane quivered and the piercings tinkled together.

Vetra flicked at her visor.

FEMALE ANGARA IDENTIFIED, flashed across her vision. TANQUIIR RAU, AGE 53.

“That sounds perfect, Citizen Rau,” Vetra said. “Can you deliver that to the Tempest by tomorrow morning?”

She kept her mandibles carefully raised when she spoke, hiding her teeth.

“Hmm,” Rau said. “Tomorrow afternoon, definitely.” She poked at her datapad. “Morning? Depends whether that strike’s actually over and,” she shook her head sadly, “how many protestors get in the way. I’m so sorry about them.”

She'd obviously noticed the spider, so it must have had a right to be there. 

RAINSPIDER, her visor flashed helpfully. MINIMALLY VENOMOUS. NO DANGER TO ANGARA. NO KNOWN DANGER TO INITIATIVE SPECIES. HUNTS IN PACKS. EXCELLENT VERMIN CONTROL.

Vetra sighed. “Who can blame people for being suspicious, after the last load of aliens? Hope they get over it soon!”

Bloody freezing in this place. She’d thought humans were bad, she’d thought asari were worse, but angara always set the climate control to “actual fridge”. 

Rau shrugged. “I suppose kids that age always want something to yell at. Long as they stick to waving signs and don’t hit anyone, I’ll cope…” She stared at Vetra’s mouth like, well, like she'd never seen a sentient being with more than two jaws before. “If you don’t mind me asking, _are_ you a bunch of different species working together? Or one species with different… like how raobeetles have hive builders and food gatherers and soldiers, um, not that you’re a beetle obviously, er…”

“Different species. Extremely different species. From five completely different planets. The brown furry people and the blue frilly people are _not_ the same – that’s just convergent evolution.”

“And you all lived in peace back in _Essau?_ ” Rau looked sceptical.

“…On a good day, we lived in peace.” Oh dear, not _this_ conversation.

Rau chuckled. “Now I _need_ to know about the bad days, but I’d better get back to work. But first… can I get a picture of us together? For my grandchildren? They’re not going to believe this!” She smiled across at Vetra, looking more like a wide-eyed plushie than ever.

“Definitely! And tell you what, Citizen Rau? I can’t make any promises, but I’ll put in a good word for you with the Nexus.”

Keep your claws retracted, keep your gloves on, hide your teeth even if it makes your face ache. Once they’ve stopped fearing the unknown, once you’re sure they’ve classified you as _strange-looking person_ rather than _monster,_ you can relax.

Rau leapt to her feet, long white skirt twirling out. “ _Yes!_ I can’t make any promises about the _punctuality_ of your food, but its quality?” She punched the air. “This is my opportunity to impress real space aliens!”

\----------------------------------------

Vetra approved of the Ayan sleep cycle. Wake a few hours after midnight, work till the day got hot and the biting insects came out, sleep for another few hours, wake up when things had cooled a bit and either go back to work or have some fun, go back to bed a few hours before midnight. Much more comfortable than synchronising herself with a bunch of humans and asari.

Of course, Aya City was built by angara who weren’t expecting alien guests, so there were no streetlights. Turns out the only thing worse than asari night vision is human night vision. Half the Tempest’s crew spent half the work day creeping round by torchlight and trying not to shine torches in anyone’s eyes. Suvi got hopelessly lost in the dark twice – Kallo rescued her the first time and the second time the police brought her back like a stray. Good thing there wasn’t much crime.

A few hours after dark, most of the Tempest’s crew were still off ship. Ryder and Cora had been invited to the governor’s diplomatic ball, with actual paper invitations. Jaal had taken Liam, Suvi and Gil to meet his friends and his other friends and his favourite artist. Peebee and Lexi were probably at the museum again.

Vetra was in the kitchen, eating a ration bar over the sink, when Lexi marched in and switched on all the unnecessarily bright lights. “ _Some people!”_ they snapped. “If people would just learn to say what they mean! And if people would stop neglecting sensible precautions… well…” they massaged their forehead, “I suppose I should have known to expect _that sort of misfortune,_ but one more conversation like that and I’m giving Harry back his job!”

Vetra stuffed the rest of the bar into her mouth, snapped her head back and swallowed it whole. It tasted like cardboard, and Lexi of all people wasn’t going to be creeped out. “Pelaav herbal teas are in the lower right cupboard,” she pointed out. “Stimulant teas are in the blue box, calming teas are in the green box, non-psychoactive are in the black box, anything toxic to asari is labelled TOXIC TO ASARI in big letters.”

Lexi made a dash for the calming teabags. “I suppose whiskey isn’t an option? No, no, Lexi, no using ethanol as a crutch, that would be _bad._ ”

Vetra squeezed out of the doctor’s way – damn close quarters on spaceships – so they could get to the sink and the people-with-prehensile-mouths mugs.

Lexi had spent six years on Earth, learning how to cut up humans and put them back together, but they still boiled water with their biotics rather than using the kettle.

Vetra leaned back against the wall. “I’m guessing it’s none of my business?”

Lexi hissed at the chipped mug and flicked in a few more sparks to make it bubble. “Yyyep. Patient confidentiality.”

“My condolences on… whatever.”

Lexi sighed. “I’ll get it sorted. I should get back to work.” They added another teabag to their very large mug and strode out.

Whatever had Suvi done this time? Liam? Peebee? Can’t have been Drack, he’d spent the day watching Liam’s six favourite versions of _Macbeth._

Wait, were those Peebee’s footsteps in the hallway?

Peebee stuck her head round the door, stared back and forth like a hunted animal, scurried into the kitchen, dumped her backpack in the corner and started rummaging through the booze cupboard.

“You have a bad day too?” Vetra asked.

She spun round. “Vetra. Vetra, you do not want to know!”

“Maybe I do?”

She glared up at Vetra. Stood on tiptoe, which put her crest level with Vetra’s armpits. “All right. You asked. You know how Lexi keeps testing us for sexually transmitted diseases?”

“Well. That’s never a good start.”

“You know how she never bothered testing any of us for bacterium HJ-9789 because it’s harmless to every sapient species in the Milky Way except hanar? Just harmlessly colonises people’s mucous membranes and sits there metabolising?”

Vetra blinked. “No. Bacteria are not my area of expertise. Did bacterium whatsit mutate and attack someone?”

Peebee folded her arms. “It didn’t need to mutate! You know who aren’t immune to the little tissue-invasion pili? Angara!”

“…Please don’t tell me you gave someone an intergalactic STD.”

Sometimes Vetra wondered if she was the only sensible adult on the ground team.

Nah, that was unfair to Cora.

And Ryder on a good day.

And Jaal. Jaal was pretty sensible, just foreign and fond of melodrama.

Those other three, though?

Peebee sighed. “She’ll be all right with a few antibiotics. There was apparently… oozing… but I’m pretty sure the worst bit was when she had to explain the problem to me.” She shoved the heels of her hands into her eyes. “These people will cheerfully tell you they got rid of their last boyfriend because he was no good with his fingers, in public, while stone cold sober, but let them catch a little cold or anything else that might be contagious and they’re all _oh, I have suffered a misfortune_ and expect you to work things out from significant eyebrow twitching!”

“If it’s any consolation?” Vetra said. “If Ayans are anything like Jaal, she’d probably have been just as embarrassed to tell you you’d given her a cold.”

“Avela wasn’t angry. Just unbelievably awkward!” She groaned. “Oh well, Lexi’s adding HJ-9789 to the test panels and, ah, I think she’s planning to have various public health authorities warn people to use more protection with aliens…”

“Protection’s generally a good idea. I may, possibly, have given a batarian an embarrassing rash once. At least that wasn’t contagious.”

Upside of the chirality nuisance: immunity to most alien diseases.

“Wait,” Vetra said. “You gave _Historian Avela Kjar_ an intergalactic STD?” Could have been a lot worse. Ryder still had that crush on Governor Shie. Dear spirits, she’d caught _Evfra_ eying up a few humans! Imagine that diplomatic incident! Whereas Kjar was definitely the forgiving type. “Oh well. She’ll probably classify it as an honourable injury received while boldly attempting First Contact, once the oozing stops.”

“Aha!” Peebee shouted. “Brain bleach!” She flourished the hand-blown bottle of… that murky brown herb liqueur that Jaal’s aunt made in accordance with ancient tradition, with the leaves floating in it and the pickled worm-with-legs critters. Liam swore it was delicious, especially the worms.

Vetra strolled forward to loom over the undersized asari. “No drinking alone. In particular, no drinking _that_ alone. And I can’t drink it with you. All my blood cells would explode.”

Peebee rolled her big green eyes. “Did you mix me up with your baby sister again?”

“Well, I did have to tell her where babies come from, and how to prevent them, and associated topics… and yeah, we had the Don’t Drink That, You Will Literally Puke Up Your Gizzard Stones, I Told You Not To Drink That conversation a few times.” Vetra shrugged. “I promise, I won’t let you mix me up with your mum. You don’t have to Be A Nice Little Girl or listen to pre-spaceflight music unless you want to.”

She used to worry her brains out about Sid’s hypothetical sex life. Kid hit puberty early, always looked a few years older than she was, and she’d inherited her father’s startling beauty and that vivid red skin. She was sensible, sure, but no one’s _that_ sensible and Vetra couldn’t always be around and there’s a hell of a lot of exploitative, manipulative shitheads out there.

Except when Sid started chasing boys (all same-species and opposite-sex so far) she’d shown impressively half-decent taste. She was going through them fast, but they were all reliable, respectful kids who asked for what they wanted and coped if she said no.

Meanwhile Vetra… well, she’d made some _interesting_ mistakes since being thawed.

And she probably shouldn’t be perving on Drack. He’d practically adopted her. That was weird.

Least he was reliable, for a krogan definition of reliable. Better than mooning over the Charlatan. Vidal Reyes was very much on her side as long as there was something in it for him, and probably even if there wasn’t. He made excellent company and he had _such_ pretty gold eyes and _such_ soft fur. But if he wanted her trust, he should have mentioned a few things a bit earlier.

“Tell you what,” Vetra said, “no, put that shot glass _away_ … OK, you can eat one of those worms off a toothpick if you must… I was going to say, next time we’re on Kadara you can be the responsible one. Remind me that the Charlatan isn’t boyfriend material. Poke me when I start waggling my head at him, right?”

“Ooh! Can I save you by flinging myself on the unexploded hot guy?”

Vetra put her hands on her hips. “Quit that. I’m being serious here.”

Peebee took another nibble of soggy dead worm and chewed it thoughtfully. “If I’m around? Sure. It’d make more sense to ask Drack, though. You spend a lot more time around Kadara with him.”

Drack got instant respect. Plenty of Kadara thugs thought they could intimidate Vetra, _oh yeah, she’s young, she’s Nexus, everyone knows she’s not properly trained_. Not so many tried to intimidate a krogan.

“Drack?” She enjoyed the mental image for a moment. “You know what Drack’s like about other people’s sex lives. He’d probably burst into Reyes’ apartment, right through the wall, going KEEP YOUR SLIMY PAWS OFF THE YOUNG LADIES… you remember how he got that outlaw to talk last week, by blathering on about how he heard humans taste just like Earth pigs and how much he loves bacon?”

Peebee giggled. “Or he’d chuck dead animals through his window, with messages carved on them. Old bastard means well.”

“Which is not a diplomatic complication we need. Simpler to leave Drack out of this conversation.”

“Right. Mission accepted. Remind Vetra not to hump pretty gold space monkey. Without upsetting said monkey, because he’s useful and we like him. Try and distract Vetra with, like, photos of Chief Kandros naked with his bits out or something –”

“You have photos of _what?”_ Who took the photos, had poor Tiran _agreed_ to them being publicly distributed, and why hadn’t she heard about it before?

“Oh, I don’t. I just figured, hypothetically, if I did, they’d be very distracting. He’s by far the most wholesome person I’ve caught you eying up, and I mean, you could actually breed with him if you wanted, that adds extra wholesomeness points, right?”

“No it doesn’t! Ewww! Or, er, _it shouldn’t.” Asari._ They could get some _weird_ ideas about people who reproduced via meiosis.

“But you want kids, right, once this Archon mess is over and we’re all a lot older and less dumb?” Peebee looked genuinely confused.

“There’s this clever trick, Peebee, it’s called _sperm donation?”_

“Ah. Right. That. Um. Oops. Sorry.” She stared very hard at her half-eaten worm.

\--------------------------------

Victors write history, yeah. Half of Palaven insisted the genophage had been a _great_ idea that fixed _everything._ Half of Earth insisted Relay 314 had been an unprovoked attempt at genocide. Now half of Kadara was claiming the Charlatan would fix everything ever. Possibly with the shining radiance of his face, as he returned triumphant from slaying the dread beast.

 _Damn,_ but Kelly had looked like a hero when she cursed Tann and the Nexus. She’d still had blue blood drying on her face (she’d worn the Corvannis markings under her eyes ever since, brighter than blood…) Vetra and Sid might have followed her if they hadn’t been needed.

Kelly got her fresh start, and what did she do with it? Decided the locals were inconvenient wildlife and stole their city because she could. Then she started chucking her own people into the desert if they couldn’t pay their tax – say whatever you liked about Tann, but he’d never do that. Then the whole Oblivion stunt, seriously, what was she even thinking there? What _happened?_ How’d Captain Kelly and her made-of-pure-Hierarchy-honour boyfriend end up like _that?_

Reyes and the Dohrguns hadn’t put Kelly’s head on a stake. No, Sloane Kelly got the finest military funeral Kadara Port could manage. They buried her in her old dress uniform with all her medals.

It had made sense for Ryder to betray Kelly, like it made sense for Serissa to betray Ishara. For the greater good. You do what you can.

Sloane Kelly was dead in the ground and people were cheering. Calix Corvannis just wanted to protect his crew. He didn't even get a funeral.

\-----------------------------------------

Time to get some sleep, maybe. Nah, better e-mail Jorgal Vaara first about his copper mine. Would he prefer brutal honesty or “us Council races need someone smart to bail us out of the mess we made!” flattery? Honesty had to be safer.

“Ooh!” Peebee’s head jerked up suddenly. “I forgot! Before the, ah, deeply unfortunate conversation of which we will no longer speak, I bought you something!”

“Mmm?” said Vetra, trying to remember whether Vaara was religious.

Sid had sent her two new messages. The first one read, _Have you ever heard of the Hayau clan? Deep desert Kadara, refused to have anything to do with the Outcasts or the Collective, some amazing iron ore deposits on their lands, but not enough population to mine it properly? Suddenly they’ve got Nexus hydroponic and terraforming technology and they’re employing New Tuchanka krogan as miners. I told Tann and he looked offended. Still figuring out where Jorgal Vaara fits in._

The other message was a video of lab techs bottle-feeding Earth kittens, Sid bottle-feeding kittens, and several kittens peeking out of Sid’s cowl like miniature babies.

The things _were_ adorable. They’d done wonders for Nexus morale, even if they’d inspired several new rude words for angara and one or two for other species.

“Awwww!” Peebee said, rummaging in her backpack. “That one’s got your eyes! Anyway! I bought you something!” She pulled out a wad of grotty paper printouts in Shelish, a change of socks and three tubes of lactose-free dulce de leche. “Um, it’s in here somewhere…” She found a fist-sized glowing ball wrapped in packing foam. “I heard Lexi gave you permission to eat those shiny crunchy things, so…”

The scent hit her as soon as Peebee unsealed the foam – rich and floral, with a glorious fizzy, musky edge. It was one of the top-grade vae-apples that Ayans gave each other on festivals and sacrificed to their gods. Normal vae-apples were cheap and tasty and a bit bruised and hardly glowed at all. This one shone silver-white like a tiny moon.

“Isn’t that…” bloody hell, it was so pretty it was practically a shame to eat it! “a bit extravagant?”

And maybe feed it to someone who could absorb it?

Then again, fibre’s good for you. Sugar’s digestible whichever direction it points in. It’d have a couple of the right vitamins and antioxidants. Not like vae-apples even had much protein to waste.

Peebee waved the lovely shining fruit at her. “Pfft, I’ve _almost_ paid off that escape pod. And the fruit only cost a few tubes of Alien Candy Goo From Beyond The Stars, OK, Alien Candy Goo from those bacteria on the Nexus that the humans engineered to make lactose-free goat’s milk but whatshisname the greengrocer didn’t need to know that, anyway it’s alien candy goo that definitely won’t give him diarrhoea, I’m pretty sure this dulce de leche stuff is the exact same stuff as the _abara_ we had on Hyetiana except that it starts with a human milking a goat, and honestly goats sound pretty much like a smaller cuter version of _zaihu_ except without the little hands and they can only reproduce sexually so you need a lot more of the annoying useless males, I mean I’ve never even seen a male zaihu, farmers just eat them at birth unless they want to cross two different bloodlines for some reason – Point being!” She flourished the vae-apple again. “My money! Your fruit!”

Vetra took it, admired it for a moment, and took a tiny bite.

It was so crisp it snapped when she bit into it, sharply sweet and bright-tasting, and the perfume almost overwhelmed her.

“This… has to be the best thing I’ve eaten in this galaxy.” She scraped off a little bit more with her front teeth and licked juice off her hand. The juice glowed even brighter against her brown skin, all the luminescent enzymes meeting their substrates as they flowed out of the ruptured cells.

Peebee grinned. “Hey, you wanted some dumb pointless fun…”

“It’s got some nutritional value. It’s not pointless.” She took another brilliant-flavoured nibble. Wow. These things better not be addictive.

She’d never had any allergies, chirality-related or otherwise. There were a lot of perks to that. This fruit? After the amount of time she’d spent living off ration bars and yeast paste, it felt like one of the better perks.

Peebee draped herself over one of the human-shaped chairs and started to eat dulce de leche very slowly. “You know,” she said, “once you’ve finished eating that, we could wander around the city. Find something more pointless to do.”

“Once I’ve eaten this and sent a couple of emails.”

\------------------------------------

…And now her hands and mouth were glowing and she couldn’t seem to wash the glow off. Hopefully it’d fade before morning.

Hmm. Bioluminescence is protein-based. Might come out the other end still glowing.

Jorgal Vaara got a moderately honest email about his mine, not mentioning Kadara at all. Sid got an email asking about Nexus/Clan Hayau diplomatic relations, plus one saying _cute fuzzballs, but you were way cuter when you were a little fuzzball._ Cora sent the whole team an email saying _this is a pretty good party and most of the bigwigs like Ryder, no one minds that we don’t know the formal dances, but people keep grabbing my hair without permission and they’ve messed it up._ Suvi sent the team an email saying I LOVE TAVUM TAVU,M IS GOOD.

 _Hang in there, Cora!_ Vetra sent back. _You any relation to that James Cook guy? Don’t eat them!_

“Dumb… pointless… fun,” Peebee said. During the copper email, she’d decided to lie on her back in the corner with her legs going up the wall. “I suppose we _shouldn’t_ gatecrash the governor’s party.”

“Doubt the governor would be impressed, no.”

“Hey, Vetra. Where _did_ Harper get shampoo on Thessia?”

“Same place I get it on Aya. Pet groomers.”

“…You’re telling me that half our crew are covered in flea repellent?”

“The Nexus keeps running out of human shampoo. And hey, it’ll stop them getting fleas.”

Peebee contemplated this for a moment and waved her legs in the air. “Hmm. I’m sure this city has great bars, probably the sort where they brew their own drinks out the back and recite their own poetry, but… dunno if they brew anything you can drink. Maybe we’d be better off dancing in Tartarus next time we’re over there.”

She raised herself into a handstand and walked a few paces on her hands before flipping upright.

“Tartarus?” For _fun?_ “Crowded, still smells funny, so loud you can’t hear yourself think, and enough people have tried to stab me that I’m not going back there without my armour. I don’t mind being a Kadara Port thug for business, but I don’t do it for fun!”

Peebee blinked. “No one’s ever tried to stab me there! Grope, sure, but they back off fast when –”

“Course they haven’t. You don’t look like a threat.”

Peebee’s mouth fell open. “ _Not a threat?_ Do they know how many kett I killed on Eos before you lot even showed up? I took down that last Architect practically single-handed! Unless you count Zap! Who I made!”

“We’re talking about _violent idiots,_ Peanut Butter. Mostly human or turian violent idiots. Turian violent idiots like to assume only turians and krogan are dangerous, _we are the third race, our title won by merit, forged by the desert sun born armed and armoured_ and that crap. And a surprising number of humans figure that if they look at a woman and want to fuck her, that means she’s… too soft to fight? I don’t get it either?”

Shouldn’t primal masculine urges be more “try to impress the best warrior because she’ll be good at defending her children from predators?” Then again, humans somehow evolved females smaller and scrawnier than the males, so who knew what was going on there?

Peebee wrinkled her nose. “Ewww. Well, better groped than stabbed, I guess?”

“Hmm. Generally?”

\------------------------------------------

“Your idea of a wild night out is _breaking into the botanic gardens after they’ve closed for the night.”_

Vetra rested her elbow on top of Peebee’s head. “Come on, it’ll be gorgeous! They have a whole bioluminescent section!”

“Not an armrest!”

“Hey, I’m average height.” She put a bit more weight on her elbow. “Not my fault your dad had incredibly recessive genes.”

Peebee shoved her arm away. “It’d be a lot easier to break in if we were in armour…”

The wall was a good five metres high, but it was made from big, craggy, distinctly climbable rocks with no spikes or barbed wire anywhere. “Lot less fun though!”

 _Damn_ but it was a lovely night, warm against her skin and smelling like alien flowers. The stars, well, they’d all been spoiled for starlight on the Tempest, but she could see the arc-shape of the new galaxy across the sky.

In her old hometown, they’d called the old galaxy the River of Stars. Her father told her fairy tales about cunning Essira, who drank from the pool of stars and spilled it across the universe. On Daurine Colony it had been the Thousand Birds flying to the Otherworld, or the wealth-god’s flower garden, or the souls of lost miners watching over their kin. Sid used to make paper birds to stand with the Thousand. She might still remember how.

Kallo’s culture had been spacefarers for so many generations that they’d forgotten their old, superstitious explanations for the path of stars across the sky. So he’d made up new stories for fun, while the arks had been lost and they’d protected the Tempest together, while she’d desperately hunted down rumours that Kelly’s exiles had survived, while Kallo and Vetra and Sid and poor soft-hearted Suvi discussed whether they should save themselves and leave the Nexus to live or die. For a while there, when she’d always been hungry because Sid might still be growing and needed the rations more, and Kallo kept apologising for his fast metabolism, taking the ship and searching for Kelly had looked like the best way to stay alive.

Havarl and Aya and Voeld had lost their history, but Vetra was willing to bet Jaal knew stories about that arc of stars. Maybe they were pre-spaceflight (or did the Jardaan make his ancestors and immediately hand them spaceships?), or maybe he’d made them up last week. Either way, he seemed like a man with good taste in fairy tales.

“This is civilisation, Peebee, we don’t need jump-jets in civilisation. You can see well enough to climb, right?”

They’d solved the asari-have-no-night-vision issue by putting Vetra’s visor on low-light settings and duct-taping it to Peebee’s face.

Peebee shrugged. “I think so. Anyway, I bet I can…” She crouched, glowed blue, and leapt five metres straight up trailing blue fire like a rocket. Grabbed the top of the wall with her fingertips, scrabbled for a foothold, and dragged herself up to sit on top of the wall. “Hah!” she called down. “Thus always to _average sized_ turians!”

“Hey, no fair!” Vetra tucked her gloves into her pocket, flicked out her claws, and scrambled up the rocks and down the other side like a spider. _Hell yeah, I’ve kept myself in shape._ “You coming down?”

Peebee drifted to the ground like a blue-glowing snowflake.

Yep. The Havarl Garden. Dark bushes covered in blossoms brighter than stars, toadstools glittering like diamonds, buzzing winged-shrimp creatures that could have been made of red crystal. Mini-Havarl, except without the critters trying to squish you and the dumber locals trying to shoot you and the plants trying to sting you to death, so not very authentic.

And a ragged old man asleep under a bush. Yeah, Aya was a nice place, but it wasn’t pastel plushie heaven.

“Let’s move further in,” Vetra whispered. “He looks like he needs his sleep.”

They tiptoed deeper into the park, past trees that dripped shimmering mauve flowers, under huge slit leaves that blotted out the sky. Big silver beetles whirred up in front of their feet. One beetle landed on Peebee’s shoulder and sat there like a jewel.

Something underground sang a rasping, warbling song, and something overhead answered.

They came to a wide pond full of little islands and iron-lace bridges, the water half covered in fringed leaves and – tiny motionless flames? No, those were flowers. Animals stirred between the leaves and undulated through the open water like living, shining silk scarves.

Peebee slipped out of her shoes, sat down on the mossy slope and dipped her feet in the shallow edge of the pond.

“If those fish things eat your feet,” Vetra whispered, “it’s not my fault.”

Peebee grinned up at her in the flowers’ light. “I’d suggest we go swimming, but…”

“But.” Some people got mouths that sealed shut and an insulating fat layer, and the ability to hold their breath for about ten minutes. Other people could just about manage to not drown.

“Also,” Vetra pointed out, “we might hurt the fish or something. They look fragile.”

She put her shoes aside, though, and sat down beside Peebee so that the warm water lapped at her hocks. A scarf-fish drifted up to her toes and undulated back and forth in place, like it was smelling the water or… did it have a face? Did it have eyes?

Peebee prodded the fish with her long webbed toes. It convulsed, spat glowing slime everywhere, and shot back into deeper water.

Vetra groaned. “What did I just say?”

“Didn’t look injured. Slimy. I can’t believe your idea of a wild night out involves _botanic gardens.”_

Sometimes, the kid was more innocent than anyone had a right to be. Vetra stared her down. “I’ve had nights out where people _died._ Nasty bar fight once, they got my gun off me, held me down, I had to kill a pirate with my _claws_ to get away –” she flicked her claws out and back in for emphasis – “you know batarians have that big artery between the eyes? She absolutely deserved it, but that is _not_ something I want to do again.”

Peebee blinked. “What did she –”

“ _Not_ your business. I’ve had all my money vanish, I’ve woken up in beds I’d rather not describe. So let me appreciate a couple of days where no one’s shooting at me.”

“…Sorry. It’s a pretty garden.”

Peebee had never been in any danger she hadn’t chosen. Been forced _out_ of danger, sure, spent eighty years being treated like a cute ornament, but not into it. Sometimes she forgot that.

“I think this beetle likes me,” Peebee added. It was still on her shoulder and it had started digging its little horns into her shirt.

She poked the beetle. It bit her. She shrieked something that translated as “viscera of great incest!” and stuffed her finger in her mouth. The beetle whirred away and thudded onto Vetra’s head.

“Clearly likes me better. Your finger OK?”

Peebee inspected her finger. “Skin’s not broken. Might be bruised though.”

“If your hand starts melting I’ll call Lexi. Look, I have a cool hat.” She tilted her head from side to side. The beetle clung on, although its little claws got a bit sharp.

Peebee poked at the duct-taped visor and looked confused – all the menus were in Apien. She started taking beetle hat pictures with her omnitool instead. “Your mouth’s _still_ glowy. I need to eat one of those super-fresh crunchy things, see if it dyes my mouth glowy for this long or whether the right enzymes break it down faster.”

“Feed it to Suvi, she makes a good experimental subject. Unless you’re Avela Kjar. Maybe especially if you’re Avela Kjar, eh?”

Peebee shook her head. “For mentioning that? I’m sending this incredibly unflattering picture to the whole crew.”

Of _course_ someone exchanged STDs with the aliens. Always happens. Every First Contact that didn’t involve volus. Including hanar/drell. Including salarian/elcor.

“Poor Avela. Here’s wishing her a speedy recovery.”

There was a blue flash and quite a lot of pond water hit Vetra in the face. Her hatbeetle squeaked angrily, leapt off and buzzed into the bushes while she leaned over to drain the water out of her cowl.

“You _splashed my beetle._ You’re a hundred and fourteen and a professor of something and you splashed my poor, poor defenceless beetle. _”_ Her shirt and shorts were dripping warm water and little bits of algae. Good thing the night was warm. “What are you actually a professor of, anyway? Pond levitation?”

Peebee stopped giggling and stared at her knees. “I, ah… never actually finished my undergrad degree.”

“Really?”

“Well, you know how it is.” Anger flashed across her face and disappeared. “They want you to write sociology essays when you’ve got better things to do, and then some old fossil from Thessia keeps failing your sociology essays on grounds of disrespect for ancient tradition, and then the absolute sexiest professor of all time shows up and goes oh don’t bother turning up to that lecture, you’re too good for that exam, come and help me disassemble this Prothean artefact instead and then disassemble my pants, I’ll totally start putting you on my papers as second author once you have a bit more experience…” She went back to staring at her knees.

“Yeah, that definitely never helps.” Bloody Kalinda. Bet she still thinks she’s unfairly persecuted.

Peebee shook her head. “That research she sent me? Yeah, I’m publishing that as sole author. If she wanted credit for her work, she should have stuck to creepy ex behaviour and bot theft instead of trying to _literally murder us_.”

The kid had a fascinating definition of revenge. Vetra would have let Kalinda sizzle, _for fuck’s sake, she tried to kill us over an interesting ball_ , but no, _someone_ decided to levitate her and throw her back over the chasm. They were all lucky Peebee hadn’t dropped the ball in the lava – Vetra still had no clue what it was, and every explanation she got was in science-ese, but it had to be more use than Kalinda.

“…Thanks, by the way,” Peebee said to the pond. “For not shooting her.”

“Well, she wasn’t shooting back.”

_Kalinda hangs from the platform by one hand, screaming, and Vetra’s ready to get rid of one more problem when Ryder shrieks “don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”_

_So instead, when Kalinda flies back over the chasm and smashes into the ground, Vetra’s standing by to stamp on her hands a few times. Asari are hard to disarm, but not many people can focus biotics after you break their fingers._

_Ryder glaring up at her, afterwards._ “ _We all appreciate your concern for our safety, but let’s try to make the lawless frontier a bit less lawless, eh? When we can?”_

Ryder sometimes acted like she was from a parallel universe of shiny happy people and candy, but she’d rescued three arks, made friends with most of the locals, dragged Morda’s head out of her cloaca, and only died twice. She knew _something._ She’d lived in a safe world once, and she was trying to recreate it, and hell, most of the time it worked. Although she got far too upset over broken fingers. Fingers heal.

“And Kalinda knows,” Vetra went on, “if she causes any more trouble, or looks like she might think about causing trouble, Ryder tells Tann about her outlaw ties and she gets exiled. Can’t trust someone like that to stay grateful, but we can trust her to want to stay on the Nexus. I think she’d live about as long in exile as Spender would.” Some of those outlaws would slice her up for purple bacon. At least then she’d be some use to someone.

Peebee kept staring into the pond, head bent so that Vetra could mainly see the ridged back of her neck.

Bloody Kalinda.

“You’re good at this,” Peebee muttered. “You… nobody gets to use you.”

 _Not any more, they don’t._ “I’m probably not a good role model. You’re… a bit strange, true, not good at politics… but what you’re good at, you’re _really_ good at. We’d never have got this far with the Remnant without you.”

“I… _people._ They don’t make sense. Upside of living on Eos eating kaerkyns and using leaves for toilet paper? Didn’t have to deal with _people.”_

“Don’t go back. We’d miss you.” Vetra squeezed her shoulder. “I promise, you’ll never lack for toilet paper with me around.”

The kid looked up and half-smiled. “Yeah. I’ll protect you from scary things! No angry murderbot gets past this awesomeness!”

"Very tiny, very concentrated awesomeness," Vetra said, and she propped her elbow comfortably on top of Peebee's head.

  



End file.
